Category: emergency

On Saturday, the kids went out on their bikes in the park. At the back of 4 o’clock, they came in and said that there was a lot of smoke at the back of the park. Anne and I went out to look and there was a plume billowing up into the sky. It looked to be about a 1/2 mile away maybe to the left of Gus’s school. We were busy still sorting boxes in the garage and taking bits into the house. I noticed on the computer that my Twitter had popped up with a Tweet from a workmate to say that it was a cool-store at Tamahere that was on fire. This is 5kms (2 miles) from us and I went to take another look at the smoke.

It was billowing well up into the sky and flattening out at some altitude where there was some wind and being carried west. I took some photos of the plume and stuck them on Flickr. Some of them have since appeared on a NZ TV website.

We caught up with some news later and the place was a cheese store which exploded just as the first firemen arrived to investigate an alarm. Several are seriously injured and one died overnight from his injuries. It’s a pretty devastating event to the community and I know that our friends in CRO would understand the enormity of this sacrifice.

The fire is still burning although should be out in the next 24 hours. It’s in a rural location with poor water supplies, not helped by the summer long drought that Waikato has been experiencing. The melted cheese, foam and water along with by-products from the burnt polystyrene insulation, refrigerant, etc also have the potential to mess up the environment and Environment Waikato have been working to prevent such a disaster.